The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. Insider Monkey finished processing 873 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of June 30th, 2021. In this article we are going to take a look at smart money sentiment towards Skillz Inc. (NYSE:SKLZ).
Skillz Inc. (NYSE:SKLZ) investors should be aware of a decrease in hedge fund interest lately. Skillz Inc. (NYSE:SKLZ) was in 20 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 33. There were 26 hedge funds in our database with SKLZ positions at the end of the first quarter. Our calculations also showed that SKLZ isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).
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Philippe Laffont of Coatue Management
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Do Hedge Funds Think SKLZ Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of the second quarter, a total of 20 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -23% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards SKLZ over the last 24 quarters. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Catherine D. Wood’s ARK Investment Management has the biggest position in Skillz Inc. (NYSE:SKLZ), worth close to $534.4 million, comprising 1% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Wildcat Capital Management, led by Leonard A. Potter, holding a $461.9 million position; 52.4% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other professional money managers with similar optimism comprise Mina Faltas’s Washington Harbour Partners, Philippe Laffont’s Coatue Management and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Wildcat Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Skillz Inc. (NYSE:SKLZ), around 52.41% of its 13F portfolio. Washington Harbour Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 7.97 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to SKLZ.
Seeing as Skillz Inc. (NYSE:SKLZ) has faced declining sentiment from hedge fund managers, it’s safe to say that there were a few hedge funds who sold off their full holdings in the second quarter. At the top of the heap, Jonathan Barrett and Paul Segal’s Luminus Management sold off the largest stake of the “upper crust” of funds tracked by Insider Monkey, comprising about $13.8 million in stock. Joseph Samuels’s fund, Islet Management, also cut its stock, about $9.5 million worth. These bearish behaviors are important to note, as total hedge fund interest fell by 6 funds in the second quarter.
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Skillz Inc. (NYSE:SKLZ). We will take a look at Kohl’s Corporation (NYSE:KSS), Oshkosh Corporation (NYSE:OSK), Autoliv Inc. (NYSE:ALV), Omega Healthcare Investors Inc (NYSE:OHI), US Foods Holding Corp. (NYSE:USFD), Genpact Limited (NYSE:G), and TFI International Inc. (NYSE:TFII). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble SKLZ’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| KSS | 40 | 1340630 | 5 |
| OSK | 28 | 360479 | 2 |
| ALV | 23 | 860834 | 3 |
| OHI | 20 | 142609 | -5 |
| USFD | 35 | 1399474 | -5 |
| G | 22 | 234361 | -1 |
| TFII | 13 | 101129 | -6 |
| Average | 25.9 | 634217 | -1 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 25.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $634 million. That figure was $1138 million in SKLZ’s case. Kohl’s Corporation (NYSE:KSS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand TFI International Inc. (NYSE:TFII) is the least popular one with only 13 bullish hedge fund positions. Skillz Inc. (NYSE:SKLZ) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for SKLZ is 30.1. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 29.6% in 2021 through November 5th and surpassed the market again by 3.1 percentage points. Unfortunately SKLZ wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); SKLZ investors were disappointed as the stock returned -47.8% since the end of June (through 11/5) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2021.
Follow Skillz Inc. (NYSE:SKLZ)
Follow Skillz Inc. (NYSE:SKLZ)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
